Kind of. I don't think I took enough pictures throughout this process to really do a good tutorial. This tutorial is what I followed but I had to adjust a few things. Hers look MUCH better. I think ours would look smoother if we used black, but we wanted espresso brown, so we had to manually make that color to match. Basically we took a $26 laminate bookcase from Target and turned it into a $400-looking bookcase as a "crate and barrel knockoff". We did that x3. Here goes...
Supplies per bookcase:
1 cheap laminate 5 shelf bookcase: $26 (we got these on sale at Target, but they are normally only $30 each)
10 1"x2"x8" pine furring strips: .82 cents x 10 = $8.20
1 12' base moulding: $9
1 sheet of plywood at least 1/4" thick: $9.96
Total for that times 3 bookcases: $159.48+tax
Supplies for entire project:
lots of 1/2"and 1/4" finishing nails: we used two packs of each for the entire project, so $5.50
good sandpaper: around $4
Gorilla wood glue: around $4
spackle/putty scraper: around $4
primer/paint OR gel stain/spray poly: we used gel stain ($13) and spray poly ($3)
CHEAPO paint brush (1" wide): $1
Optional: 2" Clamps- these helped us especially with getting the glue to set and to hold things in place as we nailed
Total for extra supplies: $34.50+tax
Total for entire project (3 bookcases): $159.48 + $34.50= $193.98+tax
Ok, so around $200 total. I said $150 yesterday, oopsie.
But really, this shelving unit from C&B is a whopping $449 for ONE unit! I believe the three of ours for less than 2/3 that price will do!
Step 1: Assemble shelving unit, leaving off the shelves and backing.
Step 2: Get 6 of the furring strips cut down to the height of the bookcase (ours was 71" I believe). Sand each strip and wipe off the dust. Glue 2 strips together with wood glue in an L shape that will stick on the front face of the shelving unit making a corner (make 2 of these- one for each front corner). Secure the strips to each other with nails. I don't have a picture of this, so if you need clarification, just email me! This is hard to describe!
Step 3: Glue one L shape onto each front corner and secure with nails.
Step 4: Glue a single strip to each back corner and secure with nails.
Step 5: Measure the distance between each space where you would put moulding (front face top and bottom and side faces top and bottom) and have HD or Lowes cut them for you, precisely. But beware, they WILL mess up. We were very exact with our measurements and still had to sand some pieces down to fit in between the furring strips. One 12' piece of moulding was just the right amount to be cut up to fit one bookcase. Oh man, I hope this is making sense.
Step 6: Glue your moulding pieces in place and secure with nails. This photo shows how the front face of the bookcase has the L shape furring strips at each corner and the back face has a single strip at each corner. It also shows the moulding before it's been stained (and the imperfections in the pine-ugh).
Step 7: Get the remaining 4 furring strips cut down to the width of the shelves. Sand each strip and wipe off the dust. Glue one strip to the bottom edge of each shelf and secure with nails. This photo is shown with the bookcase standing upside down (you can tell because the stationary middle shelf is showing it's unfinished edge.) It is easier to turn the bookcase upside down in order to glue on the strips to each shelf edge.
Step 8: Measure the back of the bookcase and get a plywood sheet cut accordingly. The man cut ours like a quarter inch TOO SHORT but we made it work.
Step 9: Stain all pine strips and moulding. We used Miniwax Gel Stain in Hickory (quart) with a touch of Miniwax Furniture paint in Black (tube) shown in the photo above. The paint man at HD showed me how to put a blob of the black on cardboard, take a cheap paint brush (like the ones where the bristles fall out easily-to make it look like woodgrain when you paint it on) and dab it into the stain and into the black paint and mix on the cardboard until we get the color we want. You don't have to do this if you just want black! I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of a pain to mix these colors a million times. But we had to do this in order to match the espresso laminate color.
Step 10: Stain the plywood backing.
The next two photos show what the stain color alone looks like before adding black streaks.
Step 10: Make sure everything is completely DRY. This takes like 2-3 days! Spray a thin coat of spray poly over all of the areas you stained/painted. This will dry quickly.
Step 11: Nail on the plywood backing. Add your finished shelves.
Step 12: Carry them back into your house and set up--voila! This project took us about two weeks but we did not work on them every single day. Some days were just for drying. That gel stain takes a LONG time to dry!
This photo is not true to color. First of all, our office walls are NOT that light blue color and the bookcases are much more black than brown. I added this picture to show you the imperfections. The pine strips are rough (even after lots of sanding). They don't glue completely flush together. You can also see where I got stain on the laminate under the side moulding. But all of these things are hard to see unless you look very close.
The shelves here look black, but they are not. This photo shows how the extra strip of pine underneath each shelf gives the illusion that the shelves are thicker, but really they just have a strip of wood glued to the front underneath edge. (I am lol-ing right now because I got the book "Intended for Pleasure" in this photo...HA HA don't worry about that, it's a book we had to read for our premarital counseling. lol!
This photo shows how thick our moulding is. The original shelving unit was flush with the ground, so any moulding we chose would stick up a bit like that. It doesn't look bad, just a little weird that you put your books OVER that edge to get them on the shelf. We won't use the bottom shelf books a lot anyway. Can't you tell...those are hubby's college textbooks. You know I will NEVER need or want to look through those! haha
We secured each bookcase to the wall with drywall anchor screws and the L shape bracket that came with the unit. They are VERY sturdy now.
(This bugs me that the second shelf down is not even with the next one!)
And there you have it! Sorry it took so long to get this typed up! Hopefully it will help someone out there get the look of a more expensive shelving unit without dishing out the dough!
See ya later!
